Showing results by publisher "Tantor Media" in Football (American)

The Montana writer Norman Maclean wrote, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing." Rick Bass, born and raised in Houston, knows that in Texas, there's no clear line between religion and football. In Wrecking Ball, award-winning writer Rick Bass chronicles three...

Maggie is living from one day to the next and making things up as she goes. Her life is four kids and a whole lot of chaos, but the best kind. Two years ago, she gave up her dreams, and after a devastating loss, she may have to give up one more. With four kids depending on her and not a chance she'll let them down, she's about to learn just exactly how far she'll go to keep them safe.

Having experienced a lifetime's amount of loss and love under the spotlight of her stepfather and stepbrother's rock and roll stardom, London Fields decides now is her time to shine. Leaving for college with a clear focus and big dreams around her musical theater major, she is ready to take on the world...under an assumed name. Protecting her identity will allow her the freedom to experience life and maybe love for the very first time. A horrible accident devastated life as Logan Links and his family knew it.

This ambitious and fascinating history considers why, in the space of sixty years between 1850 and 1910, football grew from a marginal and unorganised activity to become the dominant winter entertainment for millions of people around the world. The book explores how the world’s football codes...

Allie Sutton just got a new job. Not one she wants, and definitely not one she's prepared for. She hadn't seen her dad in years, so the last thing she expects upon his sudden death is to inherit the thing he loved more than anything (or anyone)...the professional football team he owned for the last 20 years. Luke Pierson does not want a new boss. What he wants is to be a good father to his daughter, the best quarterback possible for his teammates. What he doesn't need is a blonde bombshell ruining the team's chances at another championship. 

On November 22, 1963, William Clay Ford, the youngest grandson of auto pioneer Henry Ford, made a successful bid to buy the Detroit Lions of the National Football League for the unheard-of sum of $6 million. As Ford and his entourage settled down to a celebratory luncheon, their waitress...

Lex has just been going through the motions for years, trying to let go of the one man she can't seem to forget. When she finds herself getting ready to take on a life she's never wanted, she realizes she's stuck in the same place she was at 16—heart stolen and fully belonging to another. Now, Lex is determined to move forward and finally face reality—life without him. But when the past returns, making declarations she'd never thought she'd hear again, will Lex take a chance to go after what she's always wanted?

I've never been anything but the underdog. No matter how hard I worked, I was always good enough to be someone's backup but nothing more. I thought being drafted by Cleveland's brand-new expansion team would be a fresh start. But when I find myself taking the snaps, it becomes painfully clear that I need some extra help—in the form of secret meetups with the owner's daughter. Livvy Grant is everything a guy like me could want—smart, beautiful, and knows the game of football better than anyone. But what happens when our midnight coaching sessions move from the field to the bedroom?

Andie has been hiding, wanting to stay in the past rather than face the uncertainty of the future. When the force of a lie pulls her out of the darkness and into the light—the spotlight she's avoided—she has to decide if she'll stand and fight or run for cover. With each step, she has a choice to make. She can continue to watch life go on around her, or see what might be waiting on the other side. Will fear keep her from moving on, or can she find the courage to take the leap?

By now, football's concussion crisis is well known: every year brings headlines of our Hall of Fame heroes behaving erratically and dying young. But did you know that several kid players across the continent drop dead every year before a single ball is snapped—just from extreme conditioning drills directed by all-powerful coaches? Without Helmets or Shoulder Pads takes the conversation about football and public health to a new level with investigations of the sport's underreported worst tragedies and their cover-ups, at major universities, obscure junior colleges, and high schools.

Don Perkins led a life as one of the most honored athletes in the history of the University of New Mexico and the Dallas Cowboys. But Perkins's life was far more complex and, at times, controversial. He experienced the traumas of racial discrimination, death, divorce, football-related injuries, and a never-ending search for his own identity. In his search, Perkins ventured into sportscasting, public speaking, community relations, big-rig trucking, government work, and even amateur theater, where he portrayed Frederick Douglass and other famous Black leaders.

Drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1996, Brian Dawkins fought to elevate not only his own game but that of his entire team. He sweat, bled, and dominated through sixteen seasons in the NFL, all the way into the Hall of Fame. Every step of the way, the Lord had his back. In the wake of his success, Dawkins comes forward to describe his journey to become one the best safeties in the NFL. Triumphs, pitfalls, love, and struggles—Dawkins shares them all, not for himself, but in gratitude to those who have helped him along the way.

During the 1980s, Black athletes and other athletes of color broadened the popularity and profitability of major college televised sports by infusing games with a "Black style" of play. At a moment ripe for a revolution in men's college basketball and football, clashes between "good guy" white protagonists and bombastic "bad boy" Black antagonists attracted new fans and spectators. And no two teams in the 1980s welcomed the enemy's role more than Georgetown Hoya basketball and Miami Hurricane football. The Hoyas and the 'Canes made the bad-boy image look good. Pop culture took notice.

You Are Looking Live! is about the genesis, success, and magic of a live television show that in 1975 captured the excitement of the country and launched four magnetic personalities to stardom: Brent Musburger, Phyllis George, Irv Cross, and Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder. It was the first NFL studio show to go live and the first to have both a Black and female cohost. Those four personalities battled each other and the competition, and America loved them for it. This is the story of how they got there, their drama and front-page headlines, and what happened after the magic ended.

Ryan never envisioned just how far his football career would take him. But bubbling under the surface of his entire NFL career was a collision course between his secret sexuality and his hidden drug use. As injuries mounted and his daily intake of opioids reached a near-lethal level, he wrote his suicide note to his parents and plotted his death. Yet, someone had been watching. A member of the Chiefs organization stepped in, recognizing the signs of drug addiction. Ryan reluctantly sought psychological help, and it was there that he revealed his lifelong secret for the very first time.

In the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing bigger in Texas high school football than the Masonic Home Mighty Mites - a group of orphans bound together by hardship and death. These youngsters, in spite of being outweighed by at least 30 pounds per man, were the toughest football team around. They began with nothing - not even a football - yet in a few years were playing for the state championship on the highest level of Texas football. This is a winning tribute to a courageous band of underdogs from a time when America desperately needed fresh hope and big dreams.  

Sal Paolantonio of ESPN takes listeners inside the improbable 2017 championship season of the Philadelphia Eagles - from training camp to the first Super Bowl title in franchise history. This is the inside story you will get nowhere else - from the team's storybook start to the nail-biting victory over the New England Patriots in Minneapolis, featuring the "Philly Special", perhaps the most memorable play in Super Bowl history.   

Five years removed from winning a state championship in Nowata, Jerry Bailey had ended his run as the head coach at Sapulpa and was ready to move on to another high school and another football team. However, Bailey and his assistant Reagor left school on a January morning and never returned. Because of the Hate is the true story about the murder of Jerry Bailey, a beloved high school football coach in Oklahoma. In 1976, Jerry Bailey had resigned as the Sapulpa High School head football coach but was murdered by his assistant Paul Reagor, Jr.

Ernie Davis was an All-American on the gridiron and a man of integrity off the field. A multi-sport high school star in Elmira, New York, Davis went on to Syracuse University, where as a sophomore he led his team to an undefeated season and a national championship in 1959, and earned his nickname: the Elmira Express. Two seasons later, Davis broke the legendary Jim Brown's rushing records and became the first black athlete to be awarded the Heisman Trophy.

In You Throw Like a Girl, former Syracuse University quarterback and NFL veteran Don McPherson examines how the narrow definition of masculinity adversely impacts women and creates many "blind spots" that hinder the healthy development of men. Dissecting the strict set of beliefs and behaviors that underpin our understanding of masculinity, he contends that we don't raise boys to be men, we raise them not to be women.